The difference between Trump and Clinton

﻿ Journalistic abdications of responsibility are always harmful to democracy, but reporters and pundits covering the 2016 campaign will be doing the public a particularly grave disservice if they continue to draw from the “both sides” playbook in the months leading up to the November election. Now that Donald Trump has emerged as the presumptive Republican nominee for president, some simple facts about him and his campaign should be stated clearly and repeatedly, not obfuscated or explained away or leavened into click bait. Trump is a pathological liar and conspiracy theorist, a racist, misogynist, and demagogic bully with a phantasmagoric policy platform and dangerously authoritarian instincts. Hillary Clinton’s flaws and failures are many, and they should not be discounted, either. But they are of an entirely different order. Love her or hate her, at least we don’t have to wonder whether she believes in democracy. When it comes to sane and even semi-sensible policy proposals for America’s future in the 2016 presidential election, there is only one side.

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Either of those two would be a failure for America and the world at large.

Hillary has changed her views on so many subjects that she could be considered a pathological liar, depending on who she is speaking to at any given time.

If those prompting a Hillary win just so she can be the first woman in office, well, America will; have to pay the price for not waiting for an Elizabeth Warren to run..

"I agree with Secretary Clinton that Donald Trump's foreign policy ideas are incredibly reckless and irresponsible," he said in his statement. "But when it comes to foreign policy, we cannot forget that Secretary Clinton voted for the war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in modern American history, and that she has been a proponent of regime change, as in Libya, without thinking through the consequences."

His comments fell in line with much of the progressive sector's response to Clinton's speech, which included criticism from journalists and policy experts such as Jeet Heer of The New Republic, Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, and Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

On Friday, the Sanders campaign tweeted out a new campaign video, featuring Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), titled simply "Judgement." Gabbard, still on active duty for the U.S. Army and a veteran of the Iraq War, stresses in the ad that her support for Sanders stems from his proven reluctance to put lives at risk in overseas misadventures. "[Sanders] has foresight," she says, "when it comes to making these most critical decisions that affect us all about war or peace."

Not true -- Hillary has always believed in progressive goals. Her methods have evolved -- particularly when she saw in the 1990s how viciously the Republicans would oppose everything Democrats wanted to do. She is more incrementalist now than she was 20 years ago, but her goals are the same.